Leigh Rostron:
Thank you. Thank you.
Chris Simmance:
Thanks, VoiceOverGuy, and on the podcast today we’ve got Lee. Hello, Lee, how are you doing?
Leigh Rostron:
I am fantastic Chris thank you how about yourself?
Chris Simmance:
Not too bad at all, not too bad at all. I think I’ve been pinned to this desk all day long and I’m not sure why, but I’ve been recording podcast after podcast after podcast this week. It’s people just like listening to the sound of agency owners voices.
Leigh Rostron:
Who wouldn’t?
Chris Simmance:
So Lee, for those who don’t know you, give us a bit of an elevator pitch. Who are you? What agency do you run? What
Leigh Rostron:
Yep.
Chris Simmance:
do you do best? Just, you never know, a client might be listening as well.
Leigh Rostron:
No, absolutely. So my name’s Lee. I’m the MD of HF agency. HF agency are a agency development partner based in the Northwest. We act as that additional development resource for our fellow agencies out there, sort of as and when they need it. So, yes, specializing all things, PHP, WordPress Shopify, Laravel, you name it. There’s not really much that. Obviously in here can’t do to be honest, but very quick at a bit of a pinch there we are.
Chris Simmance:
That’s awesome. And were you originally on the tools, should we say?
Leigh Rostron:
No, not myself. Of course, my business partner, you can hear rattling around behind me there.
Chris Simmance:
What?
Leigh Rostron:
He was. I came in, well, during the start of me and Dominic worked together back in it with another white label agency goods of time ago. And I am now sort of obviously in the commercial aspects of it, account management, sales, finances, HR,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, but
Leigh Rostron:
you
Chris Simmance:
with respect
Leigh Rostron:
name it.
Chris Simmance:
with respect to your business partner, the reason I asked that is because you’re holding a conversation and making eye contact.
Leigh Rostron:
steps.
Chris Simmance:
Um, I love you developers. You do help me a lot, but, um, you can, you can certainly tell a developer from a mile away.
Leigh Rostron:
Oh
Chris Simmance:
Um,
Leigh Rostron:
absolutely.
Chris Simmance:
how long, how long has the agency been going for?
Leigh Rostron:
Just a little over four years now.
Chris Simmance:
And you’ve still got all your hair. You’re looking relatively young. It must be going well. So what
Leigh Rostron:
Well,
Chris Simmance:
would
Leigh Rostron:
we
Chris Simmance:
you
Leigh Rostron:
don’t
Chris Simmance:
say?
Leigh Rostron:
know if this is real, but yeah.
Chris Simmance:
Oh, okay. It’s glued on, is it? So, so what would you say out of all of those four years has been one of the, you know, the biggest successes that you’ve seen since you started.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah, I would say that the biggest success we’ve seen is really the growth of the agency here as to how much we have grown in such a short amount of time. We’ve been going now just a little over four years. We’re now a team of 12. Got the lovely new offices here. You can see just behind the door behind me there is an even bigger space where the devs work from. But yeah, it’s just really the growth and the amount of agencies we’re working with and you know the growth of our reputation really as well just for you know the quality of work we provide and the service we do. But to do that in just within four years, what I was fully expecting is to take you know six, seven, eight years
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
to get to where we are now. It’s probably the biggest success I’ve seen so far.
Chris Simmance:
Nice one. So I mean, realistically delivering quality, delivering what you say you’re going to deliver is, is why people keep coming back and there is, um, there is certainly a good gap in the industry for, um, good development solutions that are support that, I mean, if you get a, you are an agency, so if you get, if you get how agencies work, which means that. Like that’s why it works so well. Like you understand where the gaps in briefs come from and all that sort
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
of stuff. and it’s easier to speak their language to their clients for them and so on and so forth. It’s an interesting time on a development point of view, because all of the AI things that are coming up and all the tools and things like that, it must be really cool because you guys are on the cusp of being able to massively improve profit margins whilst also keeping lots of people in decent jobs and keeping that quality going, right?
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And, you know, with the rise of AI and things like that, and don’t get me wrong, we do utilize AI where we can, because it is a fantastic tool to use. And, you know, I don’t believe these horror stories that, you know, AI is going to replace developers or things like that. But it can provide really good guidance and stuff like that. Referring back to your earlier point there about we know, you know, how agencies work and because our clients are agencies. really, really easy to converse with them, to identify potential blockers in a project and things like that, and be able to get over the line a little bit easier than it would be if we were speaking to someone who really had no understanding of websites or how they work or things
Chris Simmance:
Yes.
Leigh Rostron:
like that. So to have that insight into how our clients work and operate, because we work and operate in the same way,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
it’s nothing but a massive plus, a massive positive.
Chris Simmance:
That’s awesome. Crikey, you pay one guy on Fiverr one time and he keeps coming back.
Leigh Rostron:
There you go.
Chris Simmance:
Um, so if you could go back in time, just over four years, just as things were kicking off and you could give yourself one piece of advice, what, what advice would you give yourself?
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah, for me personally, I would say not to run before I could walk. I think,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Leigh Rostron:
you know, we saw the growth pretty early. We saw that capability to be able to really get ahead of ourselves and get loads of clients and things like that. But there were times where we didn’t think about our internal process, how we work, you know, how
Chris Simmance:
in.
Leigh Rostron:
we manage clients and things like that, because our team was a completely different size back then. And then we were getting all these great projects in big clients and you know, everyone was fantastic. But then when it came to actually working on those types of projects, you know, when we didn’t have that infrastructure that we have now, it was more difficult. Don’t get me wrong.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
We still delivered because we’re always delivered, but it was just
Chris Simmance:
We just
Leigh Rostron:
so
Chris Simmance:
worked
Leigh Rostron:
much
Chris Simmance:
evenings
Leigh Rostron:
more special.
Chris Simmance:
and
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah,
Chris Simmance:
weekends
Leigh Rostron:
yeah, exactly. Late nights,
Chris Simmance:
and two laptops, two hands.
Leigh Rostron:
yeah, late nights, weekends, everything like that. But I think, you know, if we had the sort of infrastructure and the processes that we have in place now, like through the likes of Click of our project management system, HubSpot that we use and things like that, it would have been so much easier. But then
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Leigh Rostron:
in the projects that we classed as big back then, are, you know, sort of middle of the road now for us. But I would have much preferred to spend that time in the early days, really refining our process. You know, what is our delivery roadmap? You know, how do we, you know, service to clients rather than taking on these big
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
projects. You see the dollar signs and going, oh brilliant, yeah, we can smash this out of the park. And then it’s sort of going off the tracks halfway through and being a lot more stressful when, you know, my wife threatening to leave me and all of this, you know, you’re not in our process. It would have been much easier just to have it all in place back then and say no to the bigger projects that we potentially just didn’t have the infrastructure in place for.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. I think that’s a lesson that quite a lot of agency leaders face early days and you know, cashflow is king and you need lots of cash to flow in order to grow. Um, but it’s one of those things that you either learn like you have, um, and you know, take it from there and you know, you sort of have a gut feeling for these kinds of things,
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
um, or, um, you don’t, and you have more problems down the line. The interesting thing which often comes from it in the longer term is like a decent lead scoring process. You can get from the brief whether or not this is a lot of red flags or if the price is right, it’s worth pushing a bit more. If it’s in a niche which you’ve worked in before that fits something you’ve already done before, that means you can leverage things you’ve already done before, then it’s probably better than something that’s brand new and really complicated just because it’s shiny. And I know what development shops are like for wanting shiny things. Uh, cause agents, digital marketing agencies, SEO, PPC people, they want shiny things
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
developed as well. So yeah, would you think you’d listen to that advice though?
Leigh Rostron:
It’s difficult to say because I’m really stubborn at the best of times to be fair,
Chris Simmance:
No!
Leigh Rostron:
so I always think my advice is the best. But yeah, I do believe so. I think if I speak to other agencies earlier on and them saying, you know, maybe you should approach it this way, 100% I’d listen to the advice. And I think that’s got us to where we are now, obviously
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Leigh Rostron:
working with so many agencies. I think we work with a lot of people. you know, close to 60 agencies now sort of across the UK, some international, and working with these guys and learning how they do things has
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Leigh Rostron:
lots of additional little routes and little processes that we’ve added into our own workflow. So we’ve got the amount of our process, the amalgamation of 60 agencies and the way they work. And we picked out all the best bits and put it into one process. So it really, really does work. And I think gaining advice from established agencies and things like that is nothing but a positive absolutely.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And, and product aside, because obviously your product and what you sell is based on the skillset of the people in the business. How did you, how, how did you derive on the positioning focusing on agencies and focusing in that area? Cause lots of it, lots of agencies, marketing ones, developers, et cetera, design, et cetera. That’s a really hard thing. Um, often it’s like, well, we do SEO for everyone and we do it in every way. And how, how did you get to that point where you were like, It’s only going to be agencies. That’s the fit for us.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah, absolutely. So, HazyRever was born, of course, because Dominic, my co-founder, he was another quite successful white label agency from, you know, back in 2008, and things like that. And they sort of saw the gap in the market. Back then, this is before I even got involved in the world of web. But they saw a gap in the market there to be that, that development expert to, you know, they was doing all sorts of things off, you know, horror stories off, you know, offshore and using freelancers and people
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
just disappearing and dropping projects at no notice whatsoever. So came up with the concept of, you know, let’s just work for other agencies because, you know, agencies, it doesn’t matter, you know, how big your agency or how big your development team is, more than likely there’s going to be a need at some point for additional support and additional resource.
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Leigh Rostron:
You know, there’s certain skill sets that we have, for example, that the majority of our agency clients don’t have. They can’t provide that development expertise that we might be able to, when it comes to the lives of custom integration development and things like that, a lot of agencies can build a website, absolutely, but can they integrate it with the likes of Microsoft Dynamics? Possibly not. That’s not for any fault of their own, their focus is
Chris Simmance:
No,
Leigh Rostron:
on
Chris Simmance:
you’ve got your skills, yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
marketing. So this is where we sort of come in as the development experts. And of course, Dominic sold out his shares in the other white label agency a good few years ago now and tried something a bit different. I worked with Dominic at the other agency. And again, I tried something a little bit different, just had my third child and I thought, you know, let’s go into AI. So, you know, I started a bit around AI and things like that, which was great. But then COVID hit.
Chris Simmance:
Yep.
Leigh Rostron:
Out of chance, me and Dominic ended up meeting up for a beer one day and… The hate trap was born.
Chris Simmance:
That’s awesome. And, and, and the fit, the, the positioning in the fit works in this market for sure. Um, there’s, there is, there’s a few, there’s a few businesses which do what you do, but having the fit and sticking to the fit is, is how, where you win. Um, so is there anything that you guys, um, as a, as an agency kind of regret doing that, that you… As soon as you learned it was the wrong way of doing it, you kind of have now made it either a policy or a process that’s helping you do well now.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah, 100%. And I would say it’s recruitment.
Chris Simmance:
Okay.
Leigh Rostron:
The way we previously approached recruitment back in the day, and you know, we did have some horror stories, you know, with, you know, getting a CV through and it was brilliant, absolutely amazing on paper.
Chris Simmance:
Thank you.
Leigh Rostron:
All good on that point of view. And then we sent over a test project and that would be brilliant. All right, excellent. Offer the person a job. Let’s get him in. let’s put them on a decent salary. You know, we want to keep our best devs and things like that, but they’re not quite working out from, you know, maybe a cultural fit or maybe work ethic or something like that. But by the time we realized that it was too late and
Chris Simmance:
and it costs a lot.
Leigh Rostron:
yeah, it costs, it costs a hell of a lot of money. So we changed the way we recruit quite aggressively. So the way we do things now is we have a very short, if we like the CV, we’ll have a very short telephone interview with the person. We’ll actually invite them in for a trial period.
Chris Simmance:
and
Leigh Rostron:
So it’s a trial, we’ll bring someone in for a few days, you know, anywhere from two days to a week, five days sort of thing, pay them for their time based on, you know, their required salary or what they want. Because we just found that gives us so much more to go on. You
Chris Simmance:
Mmm.
Leigh Rostron:
know, they spend a few days with the development team, a few days with the project management team, QA. they can really see how we do things. And it’s not just a case for us to get a feel of how we feel about the calendar,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Leigh Rostron:
but
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
it’s also really to give them a feel of how we work. Because we are so new development, you know, our workflow is very much like conveying about a project will come in and we’ll get built, we’re going to keep adding it and it will go, and then you’re onto something else. So it’s a bit more fast paced than what you see in your traditional agency.
Chris Simmance:
Yep.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah, developers to come in and work with us, really see how it works. for them then to make an informed decision or whether this is what they want or it’s not quite for them. But at the same time for us to really get a good view on how they work, how they integrate with the team, what’s cultural fit like, are they all getting on? Are they doing things the way that we require them to be done? Because we’re a development agency working for agencies, you know, we’re not just dealing with your local butchers things like that. So the people we’re working with typically understand websites. So we
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
can’t skimp on quality, we can’t cut corners, we can’t do anything wrong. Our work has to be perfect. So we have
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
to make sure that people are gonna be to that standard as well. And I think bringing people in to do that trial has only done us well. But since we’ve done that, we’ve only grown, no one’s had to leave hatred, which is great. You know,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Leigh Rostron:
I like it. Yeah,
Chris Simmance:
that’s,
Leigh Rostron:
yeah, absolutely.
Chris Simmance:
that’s nice. Isn’t it? That’s nice. It’s a try before you buy style type approach in a, in a nice way, of course.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
And, and, and that, that works both ways, isn’t it? Because I guess if they don’t feel comfortable within that week or a few days or whatever, um, then they’ve sort of lost nothing in the sense cause they get paid for their time, but they’ve also kind of got the, uh, they might be a really good fit for skill, but not for, for the business. and then you can kind of keep them on the list and say, hey, look, if we ever get over capacity at a certain point in time, I know you’re really good, so can we reach out and that sort of thing. It’s you’re building a bit of resilience as well for big spikes of new sales and all sorts of things like that, it’s
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah,
Chris Simmance:
great.
Leigh Rostron:
absolutely. That also has been on board in that person as well, because, you know, the trial doesn’t have to go perfect. We understand, isn’t it? You know, it’s never going to be perfect. If it was, we’d have, you know, as many developers say. But, you know, it’s never going to be perfect. And I think that few days really helps us home where we need to focus our sort of professional development with that person when they come in and also helps us lay out a roadmap of.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Leigh Rostron:
what they need to do, what they need to learn, where they need to improve, or even,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
you know, what can we take from them? What, you know, what are they doing? That’s better than what we’re doing. Um,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
you know, for example, if we look at our lead developer, Tom, you know, he, he joined us very early back in, um, 2019, uh, joined us as a junior developer. Had, you know, yeah, good, some good exposures of WordPress and stuff like that. And now the guys on lead dev, he’s doing crazy. custom integrations, he’s building custom APIs and plugins and all sorts
Chris Simmance:
curious
Leigh Rostron:
of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Chris Simmance:
minds
Leigh Rostron:
and
Chris Simmance:
make these things happen, don’t they?
Leigh Rostron:
he was that first success story of that process of bringing him in for the trial. He’s the first person that did it and he’s still here now as that redeveloper,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
yeah.
Chris Simmance:
And he’s happy as well. Happy people develop new skillsets because they want to keep developing. And so on the opposite side of that, then what’s something that you did super early doors that really did accelerate your agency’s growth.
Leigh Rostron:
Yes, I would say that the thing that we did super early on that really helped us get ahead of the game was focusing massively on the client service side of things. So
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Leigh Rostron:
although, you know, the developers do a great job, the skills are, you know, I would say pretty unmatched really. But we really, really focused on the communication. It was one of the first things out of the blocks, you know, made sure that we were fully community. came with clients throughout the project, if there were any issues, if there was anything we needed, we invested heavily in our project management system, ClickUp, to make sure everything’s kept in one place, everyone has visibility of it and things like that. And all that really helped us to do was if a project did, you know, it’s the world of development, there are gonna be projects that go off the rails sometimes and it’s just
Chris Simmance:
in.
Leigh Rostron:
part and parcel of what we do. But because we had that process in place where, speak to a client as soon as something’s gone wrong or if something is up. risk of going wrong. Because we do that, it was much, much easier to manage a client rather than waiting, you know, two or three weeks until it gets too much and then telling them on deadline day that, you know, we’re not going to deliver this today. We were very, very clear in the fact of this is how we want to work with our clients. We want them to know everything that we do.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Leigh Rostron:
Because my previous experience with Water Label Agency was a simple
Chris Simmance:
Thanks for watching!
Leigh Rostron:
case of we get the designs, we go away, we build it and they did a fantastic job, you know. The majority of the time, we get the designs, we go away, we build it, and then we hand something back to you in a few weeks. So we took a bit of different tracks here, whereas we’re going to be more collaborative with the agencies. So we’re not just going to be a wide label agency. You know, we are going to be your development partner. We’re going to be as if working in your office, we’re going to be there at the end of the phone emails, and you’re going to have full visibility of what we’re doing every step of the way throughout your project so you know exactly where we’re at. and if there’s anything that we need, you’re going to be on hand for us as well. So that’s what we implemented really, really early and it’s done nothing but help us.
Chris Simmance:
That’s awesome. And communication is absolutely essential when you’re running any agency, regardless of it, and, and just a shout out there. I bloody love ClickUp. It’s awesome.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah,
Chris Simmance:
Um,
Leigh Rostron:
it tastes really good.
Chris Simmance:
it’s my number one, like, uh, operational tool. I recommend almost every single time from an agency perspective. So someone’s been listening to this podcast. They’ve been eagerly to hear your one piece of advice. You would give an agency owner. They’ve come and knocked on the HREF door and they’ve said, I need to speak to Leah. just about to start an agency and I want to know what one thing he’d tell me,
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
what would be that piece of advice.
Leigh Rostron:
My one piece of advice was would be to surround, surround yourself with people you trust, but also allow them to do jobs as well. So, you know, I get it as an agency owner, I’m guilty of it, you know, and,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
you know, I think most agency owners are they want to be involved in everything. And I
Chris Simmance:
Bye.
Leigh Rostron:
understand why, you know, I’ve tried to get involved in project management in sales, in HR, in QA, in account management, everything. But I think doing that.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
you’re not doing any service whatsoever, you’re only getting part of the picture across a whole business. But if you surround yourself with good people, people that you trust, let them do their jobs and let them update you. Don’t get involved, don’t try to be everything because you will never be everything in an agency. You need to do what you’re there to do and let the people around you do what they need to do and everything will be fine.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Leigh Rostron:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
It’s sage advice. Um, get out of your own way as soon as you can. Basically
Leigh Rostron:
Exactly
Chris Simmance:
you’re usually
Leigh Rostron:
that,
Chris Simmance:
going
Leigh Rostron:
yeah.
Chris Simmance:
to be the bottleneck. Um, Lee, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been great talking to you today.
Leigh Rostron:
Absolutely my pleasure Chris, it’s been great speaking to you.
Chris Simmance:
And in our next episode, we’ll be speaking with another agency leader to hear their story and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Thanks very much for listening.